We Meet the Sloths in Costa Rica

January 7, 2023

Dawn was breaking with the moon still bright in the sky as Zuiderdam approached Puerto Limon. Soon, we would set out to meet the sloths at a sanctuary in Costa Rica. If you watch Animal Planet, you may be familiar with it from the popular show, Meet the Sloths.

The view was beautiful as we drove to the sanctuary- beaches, tropical forests, colorful houses, and farm animals. While on the bus, our guide shared some interesting facts about Costa Rica. All the beaches in Costa Rica are public. There are no private beaches for hotels or houses built near the beach. In fact, no buildings are allowed within 50 meters of a beach! (As I type this, a pelican just flew by my window in Panama!)

Although tourism is the main source of income, bananas are the main crop with 120 million boxes of bananas exported a year. However, the true highlight of Costa Rica is its biodiversity (variety of different plants and animals). Although a small country taking up just 3/100 of a percent of the world's land, it has 5% of the world's biodiversity. Nowhere else on the world, are there so many different plants and animals in such a small space. Why are there so many different animals and plants here? It is because Costa Rica and Panama form a land bridge connecting North and South America so it gets plants and animals from both continents.

Many people wanted to visit the sloth sanctuary, so our guide announced that we would be extending our tour slightly with a stop at a small banana plantation before going to the sanctuary. It takes 15 to 18 months from the planting of a banana tree to harvest. Each tree produces a large bunch of bananas that weigh about 60 to 100 pounds. The bunches are made up of tiers of bananas called hands - the banana clusters you buy in a grocery store. Each individual banana is a finger. Bananas are picked when they are green. They grow plumper and yellow as they continue to ripen after being picked. The plantation we visited catered to tourists. They grew a variety of other plants and labeled them for easy identification.

Onward to the Sloth Sanctuary! We met the permanent residents of the sanctuary - those sloths who cannot be healed and then reintroduced to the wild. All were in cages of varying sizes, but care had been taken to create a comfortable habitat. Those sloths who remained here were either too severely injured to be able to survive in the wild or had been abandoned as babies before they learned to make their way through the forest. They were in cages instead of the trees because even in the sheltered forest of the sanctuary, they would not be able to live in the trees. For example, Abbie and Blythe are both missing an arm. Abbie was hit by a car and Blythe was attacked by a dog. Brixie and Mixie arrived as babies, Little Angel fell into barbed wire and was blinded. PJ's right hand and left foot were paralyzed when he was electrocuted by power lines, so he can no longer grip the trees. Chewbacca had been kept illegally as a pet. His owners didn't know how to care for him and accidentally fed him plants that are poisonous to sloths. Bruno is a paraplegic who has no movement below the waist.

However, the sloth sanctuary does work to heal and release most of the sloths brought to it.

So far, they have released over 200 sloths back into the wild. After healing the sloths, they first release them into the protected forest within the sanctuary. They watch them to make sure they are doing okay and will be able to survive when returned to their natural home.

After meeting the sloths, we took a canoe ride around the sanctuary. Luck was not with us, and we did not spot any sloths in the trees along the river. Although we did see some birds and plants. We did see a sloth sleeping in the tree outside the gift shop building. It was a little difficult to see clearly as they are well-camouflaged in the trees.